Mitch Albom

And we went to this orphanage and it hadn't been destroyed, but it had been overrun by people jumping the walls thinking that they were gonna bring food there.

So there were hundreds of people mixed in with the kids.

But I was so taken with the children.

They were so joyous, and they prayed every night, and they were thankful, even though they didn't own a thing.

Their toilets were holes in the ground, and there was no kitchen.

They just would eat a couple things of rice a day.

So when I went back, I started writing stories about it, and I gathered up a group of guys in Detroit, a lot of people in Detroit,

work with their hands.

We're good at that.

And I got plumbers and roofers and contractors and electricians, and we started going down there.

And we ended up making nine separate trips, and we built the first toilets that they had ever had, built the first showers, the first kitchen, the first school eventually.

But I noticed that the kids were still starving and

every time we came down there, they were still just basically eating cups of rice and, you know, not very much.

And I said to the pastor, what's going on?

And that's when he said, well, I don't have any money to run this place, and I'm 80-something years old.

And I kind of blurted out, well, I could probably operate this place.

Yes, that's all correct.

I've been going there for, yeah, coming on 16 years in January.

We've had, you know, over 100 kids come through.

Many of them are up here now in college.